Episode 68: The Healing of Havening with Elle McBride

Episode 68: The Healing of Havening with Elle McBride

In this podcast episode, we had the privilege of speaking with Elle McBride, a remarkable practitioner specializing in neuro-self care all the way from Australia. Elle shared her inspiring journey of transitioning from a high-pressure corporate career to becoming a leading expert in the field of Havening Techniques. She candidly discussed her personal struggles with burnout, anxiety, and depression, revealing how a near-death experience propelled her toward a path of healing and self-discovery.

We delved into the intricacies of Havening Techniques, exploring how this psychosensory therapy operates on a neurological level to alleviate trauma and transform negative beliefs. Throughout the conversation, Elle shed light on the broader implications of trauma and resilience, emphasizing their significance not only in personal healing but also in professional endeavors and parenting. Elle’s empowering message resonated deeply as she encouraged listeners to embrace their worthiness and take the necessary steps toward self-healing and empowerment.

This episode serves as a powerful reminder of the transformative potential within each of us and underscores the importance of prioritizing our mental and emotional well-being. Tune in and let’s get after it!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Introduction: Hosts Lynn and Amanda introduce the podcast and guest, Elle McBride, an expert in neuro-self care and practitioner of Havening Techniques.
• Elle’s Background and Journey: Elle shares her experience in a high-pressure corporate job, her subsequent burnout, and her journey of self-discovery leading to exploring various healing modalities.
• Discovery of Havening Techniques: Elle recounts a chance encounter with a woman in a coffee shop who introduced her to Havening Techniques, leading to her decision to train in the modality.
• Understanding Havening Techniques: Havening Techniques are explained as a psychosensory therapy utilizing touch to change the mind’s response to trauma, based on the science of delta waves.
• Application of Havening Techniques: Elle discusses how Havening Techniques address past traumas, phobias, negative beliefs, and insecurities, leading to profound shifts in perception and emotional well-being.
• Importance of Resilience: Elle emphasizes the significance of resilience in navigating life’s challenges and traumas, comparing the mind to a landscape that can be vulnerable or resilient.
• Personal Healing Journey: Elle shares her experience of using Havening Techniques to overcome a fear of water after a traumatic swimming incident, highlighting the rapid and transformative nature of the modality.
• Readiness, Willingness, and Ability: Elle discusses the three essential factors for successful healing—readiness, willingness, and ability—urging listeners to invest in their healing journey.
• Encouragement and Empowerment: Elle offers words of encouragement, emphasizing listeners’ worthiness and capacity for healing, urging them to take the next step towards self-care and empowerment.
• Conclusion: The podcast ends with Elle providing practical resources for further exploration of neuro-self care and Havening Techniques, with hosts Lynn and Amanda expressing gratitude for sharing insights and empowering listeners.

Find Elle:

https://ellelouisemcbride.com/

https://instagram.com/ellelouisemcbride

https://www.facebook.com/ellemcbrideofficial

https://www.youtube.com/c/ElleLouiseMcbride

https://insighttimer.com/ellelouisemcbride

https://www.tiktok.com/@ellelouisemcbride

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elle-louise-mcbride-30709658/

https://www.pinterest.com.au/ellelouisemcbride/ 

Free Havening downloadables – https://havening.podia.com/ 

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Continue reading for a full transcription of this episode:

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Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

Hi, I’m Lynn.

Amanda Furgiuele

And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the Pursuit of Badasserie, the podcast. We are back with another incredible guest coming all the way from Australia to talk to us today.

This is Elle McBride.

Elle McBride

Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, ladies.

Amanda Furgiuele

We are super excited. Now, Elle specializes in neuro-self care, which is a blending various modalities to address the mind and body holistically.

With a focus on empowering women and young adults to live their best lives, Elle is a world-renowned, havening technique practitioner and is sought after for her expertise.

Elle McBride

We are so excited to have you on the show. I’m so proud to be here. Yes.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

Well, that’s how you get started.

Elle McBride

I think for most people, we get started because we either see a gap in the market or we have a personal passion.

so for me, I had come from a big corporate background. I had worked in retail. really loved lifting people up and seeing people thrive until I hit burnt out at 23.

And I couldn’t do it anymore. So I left my corporate job and I went and I traveled 27 countries.

And I just kept running and running and running until I couldn’t run anymore. This meant that a lot of experiences happened.

I had a near-death experience in Hawaii where essentially I got to the Pearly Gates and was told it wasn’t my time that my life had purpose and my life had meaning.

And so after that it was a really big unpacking of what that encounter meant. And then from there it got a lot harder.

I faced anxiety and depression and a lot of conflicts, stress that had kind of come up in my life.

And so I really started on that journey of trying to find something to support myself. then yeah, as life happens you end up places and you meet people.

And I had a meeting with a lady very randomly in a coffee shop and she introduced me to this technique called Havening Techniques.

And so I had a session and after that session it completely just saved my life. And from there, I made a lot of changes within a very short period and six weeks later, I trained in that modality and that has been seven years ago.

so, yeah, I’m the leading practitioner here in Australia and a global ambassador for this modality. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about what the Havening technique is?

Yes. So Havening techniques is a psychosensory therapy. So, psychosensory therapy means using the body to change the way that we feel.

You may have heard of tapping where you tap on certain parts of your body or EMDR where you’re using lateral eye movements.

Very similar, but what they found through the Havening techniques, it was developed in the year 2000. over the last two and a bit decades, 23 years, they have worked out the science of what’s actually happening in the mind when we become traumatized.

why then when we touch certain parts of our body, it can feel good. Quite nice. Then they linked it to if you think about nurturing baby, if a baby was crying or a toddler fell over, it runs to its caretaker and a caretaker genuinely will stroke its arm and say, shh, you’re okay.

What this does is it produces a large amount of delta waves and delta waves are what we need as the slowest brainwave that we have.

So when we get that fight, flight freeze, response, our amygdala sends off ampericeptors. It’s so quick, that instant response.

So the havening techniques, the way it works is that if you have an event that you’ve been through in the past that you continue to relive, if you have a phobia or a thought or a belief about yourself or about life, you can permanently change the way that the amygdala responds due to the activation of delta waves.

it’s such a quick and rapid modality, but it’s permanent. I love it because sessions can happen where it’s very limited context.

People don’t have to share about the traumas that they’ve been through. Often by the end of the session, they do share because they’re no longer attached to it, that connection towards.

I like to say, it’s like the memories there, but there’s no more alarm system going off. It’s a really wonderful and nurturing modality.

It originally was amygdala-deepetentiation, but then they moved it to havening because we’re creating a safe haven in the landscape of the mind.

It’s very complex and neuroscience, but it’s very deceptively simple when it comes to a modality itself in the healing world.

I love that.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

I mean, I love modalities to help us like process and to heal and to re-engage or peel back those layers of the onion.

I know you work a lot with women and with this Not just to overcome trauma, but to heal and process it, but also to work through insecurities or self-doubt and beliefs.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because especially our audience is mostly entrepreneurs and small business owners.

think a few of us have faced some insecurities.

Elle McBride

We could all put our hand up, even myself. And this is what happens is that for myself, I look through the lens of trauma-informed perspective.

But we have, in this today’s society, we put trauma to the first responders, to those that are experiencing war and trauma in that perspective.

But traumatic experiences for somebody could be hearing a parent when they’re a child speak about yourself in a way that just

This shifts the belief of, oh, maybe I’m not loved, maybe I’m not good enough. And then, as we do, we venture out into the workplace and we’re often let go of it for whatever reason, we let go of a job.

Or, you know, these small things happen and they change the belief that we have about ourselves. So, for myself, yes, we can work on the belief.

But the reason why we have that belief is because there’s been a very either minor or a very large, significant event that has happened that’s changed that perspective.

So, the way that I love to work is somebody in their mind, they’d either, for about 10 to 15 seconds, they would either revisit that event that took place and they would just think about that event.

Again, we’re activating that stress response to it. Or, they could just think about the way that belief now feels.

So, you might not know, oh, I’m feeling like I could never go I couldn’t go and ask my boss for a promotion.

And so you just get that feeling. That’s all we need. And it’s just that stress response on the amygdala to say, alert, you’re going to be rejected, you’re going to be left, you’re going to be humiliated, you’ll be embarrassed.

Who do you think you are? Right? of these beliefs and thoughts that we have. A human on average has up to 80,000 thoughts a day and 50,000 of those are repeated.

So if we just worked on one of those beliefs every day, like before we know it, we’re truly changing our thoughts, our beliefs.

And it can happen very rapidly. In one belief, there’s thousands of beliefs attached to that. So you just work on one belief and so much of it just gets, I like to say it’s, you know,

When you, I love analogies, but you’re sweeping the floor and then in Australia, we call it a dust pan and you you you swoop it all up.

That’s what we do when we work on one area, we end up bringing it all in. You know, we don’t go and clean the floor by just one piece at a time.

And so the mind is very similar. We can actually work on a lot of beliefs that we have about ourselves very rapidly.

We often say in Havening, there’s a, 15 minutes to freedom. There’s 15 minutes of a gentle stroking of the arms across the face or the hands.

If you do that for 15 minutes, even if sitting in silence, magical. With the train practitioner, you know, you can truly heal your, heal your life.

After my swimming incident, I didn’t go in the water for four years. I couldn’t go in the ocean. I couldn’t go in a swimming pool.

I had my first panic attack. Was. It’s in a bath about month after this swimming incident. representation of water just completely triggered me.

One day when I’d moved to the beach in Burleigh Heads, if there’s any Australians listening, it’s absolutely stunning. I’d lived there for two months.

And it’s hot here in Australia. We’re talking 35 degrees. I don’t know what that is. And I’m sitting there on the beach thinking, all I want to do is go into that ocean.

But my fear response was so great. It was so much greater than me that I couldn’t even get to the edge of the water to put my toes in.

Having known at that point what I knew about hayvaning, I said, okay, enough is enough because we’ve got to be ready for healing.

We’ve got to be ready for great through. We’ve got to be ready to decide. Actually, I don’t need this belief anymore.

It’s having more detriment than it is helping me. so I sat on that that I took my activated the stress response.

I took myself through a havening process, which is about 7 to 15 minutes. And I stood up and I walked straight into that water.

And I’ve been able to swim by myself ever since. And it was so freeing that at this point, I’d only just trained in the modality.

I hadn’t been working with clients, but I was able to use this on myself, which is now something that I teach my clients is how to utilize this modality, whether it’s a small child in a classroom or a teenager that’s being bullied or an adult going without all the things that we so wonderfully get to do.

It’s such an incredible modality.

Amanda Furgiuele

I like that you said that you have to decide, like you have to decide and make that conscious choice to heal yourself and to make those changes because it ultimately, if you don’t

it’s really great that it’s important to note that you have to make that choice because if you don’t make the choice, you’re never going to see the I strongly believe that people need to

Elle McBride

Three things, they need to be ready, they need to be willing, and they need to be able. And this is for really across any area in life.

You need to make that decision of, yes, I’m ready, whether it’s for healing or for a relationship or for whatever it is in your life.

You have to decide that you’re ready for that. You also have to be willing. In order to heal your life, you’re giving up a lot of processes and a lot of coping mechanisms and a lot of beliefs about yourself that it can be quite scary to let go of what’s been so familiar for so long in order to go into the unknown.

We all know, you heal your life and you feel lighter and you feel brighter and you have more confidence and it’s so freeing.

But when you’ve been stuck in survival for such a long period of time, the sense of freedom is scarier than the fear base that you’ve been living in.

And so… It’s a necessary to be willing. And then the third is able. For my clients, when they come to me, I have a very affordable investment rate for my sessions because I’m one of only 150 certified and trained in this modality.

so for myself, I want this to ripple out and it’s rapid and it’s fast. I have. I’ve charged somebody nothing and I’ve been paid.

Thousands of dollars for a session. So it’s very much a scale, but people have to be able to have access to the internet, to be able to make a financial investment in themselves, to be able to take that time.

know, I run it a six day women’s retreat. You know, if somebody wanted to come to that, but they weren’t able to take six days off, then it’s not going to happen for them.

So for us, really in any area of life, you Live, ready, willing, and able. And if we don’t have those things, we’re not going to be able to make that commitment to ourselves, whether it’s a commitment by time, a commitment by finances, a commitment by, yeah, again, just choosing that I want something different for myself.

And I, for me, it was always this little spark. It felt like a light of a candle flame of, want more for myself.

Now, it’s a raging fire sometimes. think, oh, come on, let’s put some water on there. It’s raging too much.

But that’s where it started. just had this feeling like there has to be something more. And I tried, you name it, so many different modalities.

I was in and out of courses. was traveling from, you know, four to six hour drives here in Australia trying to find the best of the best.

And it wasn’t an until I had that session with Karen. I sat in the chair and I didn’t even have to say what I was going through.

All I said was when I was, I started crying. The safety that she had for me there. And afterwards, I just remember the expansion of my chest and I just feel free.

This burden that I’d been carrying around that had been subconsciously locked. it was very complex time in my life.

If we had more time, I’d go into it. But we all do. We’re all carrying things that we’ll never discuss with people.

And so, you know, to have that ability to be able to fully heal from it. People come in and they say, oh, you know, when I went through it, it was really bad.

It was like a 10 out of 10. say, well, where is it now? And they say, it’s a 6.

It’s not that bad. If I poke it, it hurts. But it’s not that bad. And they say, well, what if I tell you it could be zero?

right. What if I could tell you that memory could feel like a movie, it could feel like a story you once read it, it’s not the lens that you’re viewing life through, it’s no longer weighing on you.

if that could be the case? And they don’t believe me until after the session when they’re just tears of joy because and so I’ve had people look under the chair like, Elle, what did you do with it?

I think it’s not me, it’s your willingness. Making this, you created those three things, you were ready for it, you were willing to let it go and you were able to, you were going to be stronger at the end of it without this memory.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

There’s a lot of things in there that we could really unpack, but I do love the ready, willing and able because, and this transcendence, not just to heal from trauma, but also like in the business world and the personal world and just our mindset, our beliefs, at all aspects.

I definitely love the simplicity of Are you ready? Are you willing? Are you able? Because there’s complexities and depth to each of those.

However, that’s a really simplified way of saying like, you have to acknowledge, you have to be willing to put in the steps and have to actually do the steps and have the space to do the steps.

so I appreciate that. We had somebody on our podcast a while back that talked about comparative. I can’t remember the second term that she used, Amanda.

know you remember who this was. Where people would be like, comparative trauma, but trauma wasn’t the second word. Essentially, you know, everybody, I love that you said, everybody’s trauma is their own trauma.

And a lot of times we get into, well, time was worse or mine was this and mine was that and that’s not helping anybody.

even if you’re not talking about speaking about trauma, even about like, you know, we deal with this on a business level, I’m different.

Because… And, you know, even though we see that, okay, most people go through this in your position. However, like, it’s individualized to you.

And so essentially you’re giving them the ability to have the tools. coming from someone who has put in a lot of healing work, many levels, and I’ve spoke about it a lot over our podcast here and there, I’ve written a book about it.

It is like an ongoing process. I do understand that, that breath that you can take. And it sounds like that this modality is something that, again, people can keep coming back to over and over again, because you did talk about the neuroscience side.

we know a neuroscience like once that pathway is paved, once it’s there, it’s always there. You just learn new pathways and you develop new pathways.

And so I love for you to talk just a little bit about that because I feel like it’s really

It’s a really important point near the expert, not me.

Elle McBride

Just went through it. Understanding trauma is so simple. We’ve overcomplicated it. I love to think of the mind. Everything comes through the prefrontal cortex, which is like the deciding pointer, right?

Have I been here before? Is this familiar? Do I like this? Do I not? Let’s activate a stress response, or we’re fine.

The brilliance of our mind hasn’t changed since the dawn of day. We have the knowledge and the understanding of it now.

Through the lens of which I work, I’m always looking at for people. Again, there has to be an event.

An event has to take place in order for it to change us. That event has to have meaning. My feelings were hurt.

I was abandoned. I was left. I felt unloved. The next one is the landscape of the mind, and this is to me one of the most important aspects of us and the work that I choose to do is that our landscape of our mind at any given time is either in a place of feeling resilient or it’s vulnerable.

So it’s like a landscape. If you think of a dry desert, very vulnerable, there’s hardly any water, it’d be hard to survive there.

Whereas a rainforest where it’s lush and there’s water and there’s shelter, it’s a much more resilient landscape if we were left.

And so our mind is in either one of those states. Now if we’re in a more resilient landscape within our mind, we’re going to go through life and things are going to happen.

Things are going to happen that we’re going to like and that we’re not going to like. I live by the motto that some of the best days of my life haven’t happened yet and some of the worst days of my life haven’t happened yet.

So that’s Where I choose to focus and grow in my level of resilience, which is again, building those neural pathways of I’m safe, I’m loved all is well, everything is always working out for me.

I’m full of sparkle, one of my favorite affirmations. tell myself who I’m choosing to be and I’ve overcome the things that I choose not to be anymore, the old labels that were given, the old neuro pathways that I add.

So therefore, when I come up against things in life, the fourth part of encoded trauma, so I said event, meaning the landscape of our mind, the last one is a sense of inescapability.

Again, if I’m in a state of resiliency, I’m going to face those things and be okay. But if my landscape is quite vulnerable, just say I’ve been through a break up, I’ve, you know, I was nearly just in a car accident and then something happened, whatever it might be.

E, if I’m a little bit shaken in my mind, I’m going to perceive threat a lot more. And what’s happening is because we’re so dysregulated when we’re going to sleep at night, we’re not processing our day with as much ease and therefore we’re going to sleep in this state of just uncertainty within ourself, uncertainty within our life, which then again is just feeding that vulnerable landscape.

And it’s such a simple way to then look at it and go, okay, well, our mind is constantly looking for a way to survive, but we’re constantly surrounding ourselves with so many different threats.

Every time we open up social media, we’re constantly bombarded with threats stimuli. The prefrontal cortex is working so much over time to try and just feel safe.

If when we can do that with ourselves, we can do that through an increase in an influx of delta waves to allow ourselves to just feel safe and calm.

Amanda Furgiuele

I love that you talk about the resilience because I think, as I don’t know you want to say, as a society, just have not, we’re not as resilient as we used to be.

And I think it’s a mark of a lot of entrepreneurs that they do have that resilience because you do need it in order to overcome and to pursue a positive growth mindset.

need to have that resilience and resilience and you need to understand that, as you said, some of the best things that in your life have not happened and some of the worst things have not happened.

both of those are okay and that you’re going to get through both of those and you will be resilient regardless of what circumstances come your way.

Elle McBride

And that’s where overcoming the past and the heat. Ealing isn’t just for ourselves to be present here now, but it’s for our future selves because we’re constantly, events are constantly happening, but it depends on how we look at them, which is why two children can grow up in the same home and have a completely different outlook on their childhood, which is why, you know, you’re both in a business, I have a business partner with my retreats, and so, you know, we’re both in the same business, we have completely different perspectives on our business based on the past.

Yeah, and so it is resilience to me is the underlining when it comes to trauma, because we can understand how the mind works, that part’s simple, but when we actually put it into the fundamentals of, okay, I’m, if I can focus on becoming more resilient by letting go of the past, then life’s going to be a lot easier.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

Love that. I do want to add, you said for ourselves, but also with someone who has children, I know Amanda does as well.

Elle McBride

So we don’t know what we’re doing and that’s where it’s going. Okay, well, if we reflect back, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, everyone is just doing their best all of the time.

you know, do anybody listening, like, just be a little bit kind of yourself today. It’s so simple, but like, just know that you’re worthy of healing and you’re worthy of feeling good and like whatever it is that you’re carrying, like, it’s time to just put that burden down.

Like, you’ll be so much lighter without it. I just, yeah, I really want to encourage you that you are ready for whatever it is that is on your heart right now.

Like, if you have got something that you’re like, I really want to go and do that today or I really want that for myself, just take the next step.

Take the next step. You’re worth it. Yeah, you’re good enough. You wouldn’t have the idea or if you couldn’t achieve it.

So yeah, it’s so simple, so simple. Love it.

Amanda Furgiuele

How can people get in contact with you?

Elle McBride

Just searching my name, Elle McBride. I’m across all platforms under that name. website, Instagram is mostly where I share a lot of educational posts.

YouTube, I have a 10 minute free video that you can go and try havenning for yourself. Then, yes, seeing my website for how to book in sessions, if you feel called to try this modality or find a practitioner near your yourselfonheavening.org.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

And you do work globally, correct?

Elle McBride

See, she can work virtually. Yeah, I work virtually. I love it. I did pre-end post-COVID, so it was COVID wasn’t anything new for me and I think needed to change.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

Babe, I was a pro before Zoom became awesome. No one.

Elle McBride

Yeah.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

No, it’s good. Oh, please, our audience. I know this is a little change up of what we normally put out there, but we feel that it’s really important.

To understand the whole part of who we are, what we’re doing. healing, obviously, as you all know, has been a huge part of my journey that I’ve spoke about a lot on this podcast.

so we’re really grateful to have you on the podcast today to be able to share with our audience just some different ways to think and kind of help process through that.

So please share, like, comment, follow up. And if you’re or any other social media channels that you prefer. But like she said, Instagram is her jam.

And, yeah.

Amanda Furgiuele

Of course, all that will be in our show notes. So if you are listening on this platform or a different platform than our actual website, if you go to the pursuit of badassery.com slash podcast, you will be able to find all the information in the show notes.

Lynn Howard (Lynn Howard)

Absolutely. Until next time…

Amanda Furgiuele

Get after it.